THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN, DECEMBER 12-13, 2020 4 TRAVEL + INDULGENCE theaustralian.com.au/travel

PICTURES: VISIT ; HEDONISTIC HIKING; RICKY FRENCH, INSET

tone steps lead up through mar- gland, country as flat as it gets. She reckons ble-trunked snow gums and that’s one reason she has always been drawn mountain pepper trees. Frogs to the mountains. Jackie was working as a croak and a thousand insects Contiki Tours guide in Italy when she fell in flitter above the cool sphagnum WALK UP love with a fellow guide, Australian Mick Par- moss in this high-altitude al- sons. They set up Hedonistic Hiking in 2007, Spine marsh on the plateau in splitting their gourmet hiking tours between Victoria’s High Country. Technically we’re Italy in the northern hemisphere summer and hiking, but the strange thing about this place, in our warmer months. Jackie knew the Corral, is we’re not often walking on the it would take somewhere special to convince ground. Rather, our party of four is boulder- AN APPETITE her to settle in Australia, and in this pocket of hopping atop giant chunks of granite, follow- the High Country she found it. She carries a ing not so much a track as a raised route of photo of Guide Alice in her pocket every time least resistance through a vast boulder field. Gourmet treats and mountain vistas on she takes guests on this mountain, literally The late afternoon sun bounces off the a guided hike in Victoria following in pioneering footsteps. rocks, warming our faces as shadows length- I tell Parsons my grandmother never ap- en in the lichen. We reach our destination, a RICKY FRENCH proved of hiking. Why would you walk any- ruin of giant broken pieces of granite called where for no reason? But this afternoon we Mahomet’s Tomb, and amuse ourselves by have a reason, and it’s waiting for us on a clambering between the oversized rocks, from the conga line of softly rounded sum- try. But Mount Buffalo’s most famous guide tablecloth spread over an improvised granite squeezing into the caves created below and mits that make up the be- was a woman. Alice Manfield (who became table under an unfathomably balancing mam- paying solemn heed to a sign that warns of tween southern Victoria and Canberra. known simply as Guide Alice) was an early moth rock called The Sentinel. “Welcome to the folly of proceeding further. A quick peep Geologically it’s an outlier, too, formed of an- naturalist and photographer from a local pio- Buffalo and Bubbles,” Parsons says, smiling. confirms that one more boulder hop could cient, molten granite below and sedimentary neering family who went against every so- Canapes are laid out, including Harriet- send us cartwheeling to the bottom of the rock on top, almost like a baked alaska des- cietal norm to share the mountain she loved ville’s Mountain Fresh Trout and Salmon Buckland Valley, potentially making us late sert. Across time, the sedimentary rock (call it with others as soon as the road to the plateau Farm pate, a Peaks Cheese chevre and local for the promised afternoon canapes. the meringue) has eroded, leaving the granite opened in 1908. She even designed her own walnuts tossed in honey and spices. The pros- Our eye-opening afternoon jaunt is part of (ice cream) to solidify. The result is a hulking hiking clothes, donning pantsuits, woollen ecco is from local winery Billy Button, and a boutique guided hiking company Hedonistic monster of a mountain with an extensive sub- knickerbockers and snake-defying puttees swath of snow gums becomes transparent Hiking’s Escape to Bright package. After en- alpine plateau we’re set on exploring. around her ankles. through the pale-yellow wine as we hold up during a long Melbourne winter of lockdown, The mountain is also the site of one of Vic- “It was very unusual to have a girl here our glasses to the sun. It’s a step up from my I’d be happy to escape to anywhere, quite toria’s earliest tourism ventures, when a man leading people and wearing trousers,” says usual hiking fare of a muesli bar and sand- frankly, but this is truly remarkable. named Buffalo Bill (what else?) started entic- my guide, Jackie Parsons, one half of Hedon- wich, washed down with dregs from a warm Mount Buffalo is a loner. It stands apart ing wealthy Melburnians to the High Coun- istic Hiking. Parsons grew up in Norfolk, En- water bottle.

John Blay at Coolangubra, Step by step into our NSW southeast forests

JOHN BLAY ■ ■ ■

Biamanga, NSW: The blood- The question of how places are reserved for woods are in full flower. Their nature and protected has always fascinated thick eucalypt incense hangs in the me. It seems there are things that many see air while the sound of bees is just as intense. as having special qualities. Perhaps an ani- As we walk our conversation with the mal or a bird or a plant, a landscape even, and countryside flows. There might be thousands you can’t simply isolate one or two species: of kilometres ahead of us. things need locality, space around them to We cross the main coast road and walk the survive. And there’s a human factor. Where Head of Cuttagee Forestry road along the one person sees the value, others are likely to boundary between the nature reserve and the agree, and where officialdom also recognises national park. These coastal forests were the value, then the locality is likely to be pro- worked intensely by hungry sleeper cutters tected. and millers, especially during the Great De- industrial logging in the form of clearfelling. koalas you keep your eyes not so much to- That “value” or magical ingredient must be pression. Few trees of any size escaped their Jacqueline [a French-Australian who loves wards the branches where they live but on the one of the great mysteries of nature. eagle gaze, until times changed and railways the forests] is especially interested in the fact ground below in search of their scats: little Even foresters will sometimes see the no longer required such a quantity of A-grade that koalas still survive in the tract we are rounded pellets twice the size of rabbit or unique qualities of certain trees, and they will hardwood sleepers. Sawmills closed as For- entering. We keep an eye out for them, scan- sheep droppings. The giveaway is that they be preserved from logging. estry turned its eyes from selective to more ning treetops and the ground. In fact, to spot smell strongly of eucalyptus. I know of one

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From far left: the Horn picnic spot; view across Mount Buffalo National Park; walkers on the Hedonistic Hiking tour; light refreshments; vineyard in Buckland Valley; taking in the breathtaking views, inset

The hedonism gives way to hiking for our their thousands. More than anything, this is abodes, each styled around the works of an last section, a 750m grunt up Mount Buf- the moment I’ll remember the longest. I Australian artist (my two-bedroom incar- falo’s highest point, the Horn, at 1723m. It’s a thank Parsons for arranging the show. nation has limited-edition prints by Adelaide 360-degree view of the High Country from After the stirring emotion of the night be- Hills artist Margie Sheppard). A full-body IN THE KNOW here, a rollcall of the big names: Mount fore, our next morning’s hike along a forestry massage at Botanic Alps also comes as part Feathertop, , the Bogong road through a pine plantation serves to of the Escape to Bright package, and it’s an Hedonistic Hiking runs guided hikes in the High Plains, , raise the heart rate more than tug on heart- inspired inclusion. I’m surprised how tender Victorian High Country, Grampians, and, in the hazy northeast, the Cobberas and strings. But we knock off 12km in no time, my calves are and I sink into a blissful stupor Goldfields Track and the Great Ocean Walk Mount Kosciuszko. The boundlessness of disposing of just enough calories and sweat as various aches are tenderly poked and throughout summer. All multi-day tours the landscape is almost overwhelming after a to work up a justifiable appetite. Lunch is prodded into submission, my weary body include accommodation, gourmet meals, year of being largely confined to a suburban served in the shade of pine trees, the familiar then rotated like a well-oiled sausage. local wine and beer, guides and transfers. postcode. The view of Mount Bogong, face of Mount Buffalo a stern I’m advised to stay hydrated after my The Escape to Bright package includes Victoria’s highest peak, prompts authority above us, and the massage so it’s off to the Bright Brewery for a boutique accommodation for three nights, a discussion about the plight of Castiglion del Bosco vine- beer on the deck overlooking the river as the massage, Buffalo and Bubbles hike and a the , billions yard laid out like a pat- humidity soars and storm clouds march up Bright hike, but excludes dinners. From of which have migrated terned rug at our the Ovens Valley. I wake next morning to $1850 for two people. from NSW and feet. damp, silent streets. Rain has scrubbed the ■ hedonistichiking.com Queensland each Parsons sets up air clean, and mist pools in the valleys and summer for millennia camp chairs and I surrounds the base of Mount Buffalo so that to the cool, rock collapse into one only the top is visible, floating on a soupy Ricky French was a guest of Visit Victoria. caves of the High like a useless grey sea. An island in the sky. n visitvictoria.com Country; in the re- lump while she cent dry years the flits around as- moths have seem- sembling a gour- ingly, and sadly, dis- met picnic lunch appeared. as though it’s the Down below us, easiest thing in the Parsons has been busy world. Local beer, laying out a dinner spread wine and cider are on the likes of which the Horn offer, but after the Picnic Area has probably never morning’s sunny hike it’s seen. The sun sinks on cue, behind heaven just to gulp down cool receding waves of mountain ranges, as glasses of Parsons’ homemade elder- we sit down to a three-course meal of home- flower cordial. There’s enough food to fuel made asparagus soup, wild-caught venison an Everest expedition, most of it homemade: stew with polenta chips and braised cabbage, roasted Dutch carrots, a capsicum salad, finishing off with chocolate brownies. Then, cauliflower and broccoli with feta, red onion something incredible happens. As the last of and roasted hazelnuts, and something I’ve the orange light dissolves over the horizon never had before: venison bresaola, the same and darkness takes hold, strange shrapnel meat as last night but cured and rubbed with starts erupting from the void below the stone Moroccan salt. The scrumptious brownies wall, like debris spat from a volcano, flying make a reappearance and with that my hik- upwards past our astonished faces. It takes us ing is done for the trip. But not the hedonism. a moment to realise what’s happening, but it My accommodation is Bright’s new Art could only be one thing: bogong moths in House Townhouses, five slick modern

regular colony overlooking Cuttagee Creek scat of our journey. Wombats were once a that favoured the woolly butt trees. There rarity near the coast. Only in recent years are rumours of more. have their numbers grown. As we turn downhill along a ridgeline and ■ ■ ■ come closer to the creek, I point out the gullies where I had spent the dawn month Our forest koalas, although sometimes after month recording early morning calls of still subject to the disabling chlamydia dis- the lyre-bird, the most remarkable songbird ease, can move to a new location at the drop on earth. It has dialects that vary from dis- of a hat, literally, for they spook easily. I’ll trict to district, and in one of Cuttagee’s most see them at one place and next day they’ve remote, hardscrabble gullies I recorded one gone. They seem to have a regular way of lyrebird that in an early morning oratorio travelling, a kind of koala trail they follow mimicked over 42 species of birds I could from near the foot of Gulaga, beside Wallaga identify. Lake, up Narira Creek inland of Bermagui, Included in this were details like mimick- and then through this area some 20km south ing the beginning of an eight-kookaburra to the Murrah catchment and Tanja. chorus that ended mid-note to sweep into Soon, still along the border between the the tones of a whistling kite. We would cross Bermaguee Nature Reserve to the north and the trails of many such chroniclers during Biamanga National Park southwards, there our walking. are bloodwoods, then stringybarks, before we come into the majestic spotted gums with This is an edited extract from Wild Nature: their much-patterned bark. A few woolly Walking Australia’s Southeast Forests by John butts. Blay (NewSouth Books, $39.99). The book is And so we walk, eyes mostly to the the latest in his trilogy on the history and ground, searching for koalas and potoroos. human stories of the forests of the region, Pencil cedars tower over a jungle gully, then from Canberra to Wilsons Promontory. the first, but definitely not the last, wombat n newsouthbooks.com

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